Crumbs

Ok, let me share this one with you.

 

There’s someone I know. 

While pouring out my fusilli, I suddenly heard his voice in my head: booming; calming; reassuring.

 

“A quick update from the flight-deck.  We’re making good progress and due to land in just under thirty-five minutes.  Temperature in Palma is around twenty-five degrees, visibility good and the wind light and south-easterly.  Local time is 14:45 - quarter to three.  Hope you’re enjoying the flight and that you’ll fly with us again soon.  I’d just like to wish you a safe onward journey and leave you in the capable hands of Debbie and her team of cabin-crew.”

 

Meanwhile in back, passengers and cabin-crew are tumbling like garments on Main Wash, many pinned to the rear bulkhead as the aircraft corkscrews resolutely towards the ground.  The captain probably doesn’t hear the screams.  Or, if he does, he ignores them.

 

“Everything’s under control.” he smiles to himself.

 

Now,

There’s a place where poets and story-tellers sit – high on a hill or deep in the back of a cave, poking the embers of a fire. 

 

Time was, when I used to admire those distant hills from the fields of a wide-open vale, or walk the gullies and ravines, posting scraps among the briars. 

 

I remember the first time I walked out blinking into daylight – the first time I woke on the hill and knew nothing but breeze as the earth spun in its gas.  I remember how the hours had passed.

 

There are demons skulking in that cave, hawks dive at the hill.  And I'm sitting there still.

 

I wonder if I’ll ever get back to the vale.

 

To whom it may concern (namely, me).

 

I am greatly troubled by the possibility that our words may be nothing more than aesthetic.  That is, they contain no intellectual meaning.

 

They maintain a position just above ridicule thanks solely to the intent versus interpretation ratio, which leans in favour of interpretation.

 

But, whatever the reader’s viewpoint (one hopes favourable), the upshot is that in my eyes our words remain bogus.  The worst-case is that we are merely feeding coins into a slot and pulling on a lever.  If we’re in luck, the page will fill with matching fruit and pleasure will clatter noisily into the tray.

 

Should I care?

 

Don’t know.

 

Do I care?

 

Manifestly.

 

Perhaps one ought to find one’s self an education, rather than jumping prematurely to naïve claims to knowledge dressed in pretty words.

 

I remain, of course,

 

your servant.

 

A word of advice for anyone who hangs out with a writer:

 

beware – you might get written about.

 

There.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

 

So,

 

here I am, flipping around between Heaven and Hell.

 

Not sure if the lift’s going up or down – I feel like a clown.

 

On a bad day.

 

But, hey!  This is Life.

 

Flown from the seat of a fast-jet.

 

Gauges all sat in the green with a missile homed onto your ass from an F-15.

 

Shit!

 

No shit!

 

This is it!

 

Yank the stick and try to work out which way’s up.

 

Imagine a life disconnected. 

 

Sterile. 

 

Comfortable.

 

Better off dead.

 

It’s not so bad on my lonesome (liar!).  I even turned down a date tonight – as one must, from time-to-time.

 

Pizza and a bottle of cider instead.

 

Thumbed through things I thought really mattered

and realised that most of them don’t.

 

Trouble is,

I’m not sure what does anymore.

 

Except one thing…

 

or maybe two…

 

or three…

 

four?